China Aims High

Chinese men look at a satellite built by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight.

For now, Air Force officials insist they are not eager to go down the controversial path of putting weapons up in space. "We aren't looking to arm space," says Maj. Gen. William Shelton at Air Force Space Command, "and hopefully our spacefaring brothers and sisters aren't either." Aside from the cost and the technological difficulty, there is the debris problem—China's weather satellite shattered into tens of thousands of pieces. Blowing up more satellites in orbit could make it almost impossible to operate in space.

The question of defending space has also become wrapped up in the larger debate over China. "Nobody in the space industry was surprised that China could do this," says Elliot Pulham, who runs the Space Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes activities in space. "But everybody is still pretty surprised that they would do it." Those who believe that China is trying to aggressively counter the U.S. military's technological superiority argue that there already is an arms race. "You really have got to have a defensive capability," says Republican Sen. Jon Kyl, a leading proponent of building missile defense systems in space. "If you have a rule about not militarizing space, that's already been violated." China's refusal to even discuss the test has only fueled suspicion.

At the same time, China's economy is becoming dependent enough on satellites that an attack on U.S. satellites would hurt China as well. "It is not in any nation's interest that has a vested interest in space to mess up satellites," says Michael Krepon, cofounder of the Henry L. Stimson Center, who argues that Washington should agree to negotiate a treaty over the use of space. "It is very hard for a country that has dominant space capabilities to accept deterrence, and the Pentagon is struggling with this." The Bush administration remains opposed to a binding space treaty but says it would discuss informal "rules of the road."

The U.S. military is also trying to maintain a deliberate strategic ambiguity over just how far America would go to defend its satellites. "I would argue that the rest of the world accepts U.S. space supremacy," says Joan Johnson-Freese, chair of national security studies at the Naval War College. "What the Bush administration claims is space dominance, and that's what the rest of the world won't accept." She worries that the U.S. government might pursue a strategy that would aim to maintain a veto over other countries' ability to access space. Air Force officials say they believe in the peaceful use of space by all nations, but they also assert a right to self-defense. "Veto is probably too strong a word," says Brig. Gen. John Hyten, the director for plans and requirements at Air Force Space Command. "If somebody's use of space or somebody's ability to threaten our space capability impacts our ability to act as a nation, then we need to be able to control that environment and prevent that from happening."

For commercial satellite firms, as well as the 58 other nations that own at least a share of a satellite in space, such statements are not comforting. "The space environment is very international, and politically, we as a country have just not come to grips with this," says Pulham. "The idea that we have any kind of veto over access to space is just absurd." Retired Chinese military officer Bao Shixiu, a research fellow at the Academy of Military Sciences in Beijing, makes a similar point. "The monopolization of space by a single country," he says, "cannot be accepted."

There are, however, some defensive options that are not at all controversial. The Air Force is already working to rebuild its space surveillance network, which atrophied after the end of the Cold War. Using a set of 28 radar sensors at 18 ground stations around the world, along with one sensor in space, officials currently track more than 17,300 objects in space, including satellites and debris. Built with a focus on the Soviet Union, the network today has some gaps in the Eastern and Southern hemispheres.